Monday, February 13, 2006

I was pretty busy last week so I did not get to play as much as I would have liked. A couple of nights ago, I was bored and decided to look at the Party Poker Steps again.

I decided to pursue the Mini Steps which is a 5 round process. The first round is $5+1. You need to win to advance. 2nd through 5th place get to play again for free.

I fired up two level one steps. I won one and finished second in the other. I played the second round. In round 2, you need to finish in the top two to advance. I managed to win again and so it's on to round 3.

Last night I played my round 3 match. I was running well, catching good cards, and picking off a couple of bluffs. It was down to 3 handed. The top 2 advance. The third place player was down to 2.5 BB while me and the other guy had around 10 BB each. He went all in. Me and the other big stack called and tried to check it down. The small stack woke up with a big hand and he tripled up. Uh oh.

It went back and forth a few more times and eventually it was folded to me on the small blind and I pushed in. The Big Blind called and I was dominated. Out in third, so I am still at level 3.I feel like I made the correct mathematical plays, but it just did not work out. My luck ran out.

If I get to level 5, 1st place is $4,000. That is a reeeeaaaaal nice pay day. And that is just the mini steps. I am going to investigate the big steps and see if this might be an easy way to run up a cash balance for the World Series of Poker.

Of course the problem with the steps is that while you are playing these games, you are not earning any money until the final step.